Five flavours Katie Bell likes and two she doesn't
by thesmokinggnu
Summary: Life is like a box of Every Flavour Beans. According to Katie Bell anyway. Mild femslash.


**Disclaimer: I am not JKR. **

**5 Flavours Katie Bell likes and 2 she doesn't**

Bertie Bott's every flavour beans. You were eating them the first time I noticed you. I was shy, the new first year hovering in the corner, teetering on the edge of the crowded room. You were sandwiched between admirers smiling and laughing about nothing at all. I saw you around in the days and weeks that followed, I was curious I think; you were a point of reference for my directionless eleven year old mind when I had no real idea of where I was going, or what I was going to do when I got there. I was overwhelmed at first by the noise and confusion of school, the mysteries of incantations and spell models buzzing in my head, the sheer number of people everywhere. It was like treading water; simultaneously trying to keep my head above the surface and yet touch the bottom with my feet. Those times tasted like peppermint; safe and familiar like brushing your teeth on Thursday mornings, yet somehow exciting and tangy at the same time, making my breath catch sharply in my throat.

Despite my many speculative glances we don't properly meet until the following year. Then, one mild September evening with the barest hint of yellow gilding the distant tree-tops I walked onto the quidditch pitch for the first time. You look at me, smile and say hello. Our eyes lock but you don't see me then, not really. That comes later, as you offer comfort seeing my face pale and nervous before my first match, the crowd baying outside. Bizarrely your idea of reassurance – a quick hug and a smile followed by a far too flippant "People hardly ever die in matches these days" – seems to work. Then finally what I have been waiting for although I never realised: the fevered roar of the crowd, the triumphant explosive moment that made me think of strawberry ice cream as we embraced in mid air. Your words were lost in the rising symphony of collective delirium but I felt your warm breath on my cheek, and decided that words were irrelevant anyway.

Things began to click for me after that. It was as though in the swimming pool of my life my feet had finally found the floor. Time filled with a blur of homework and essays, candlelit feasts and flushed cheeks from snowball fights. There were dusty dragging afternoons spent in the library where time seemed to stand still just when you wanted it to pass most quickly, and intense muscle-wrenching evenings spent training, which in spite of the aches and pains ended far too soon. There were birthdays and Christmases, a fumbling awkward kiss under the mistletoe with a boy I never even spoke to again, and New Year's Eves: the first time I felt the warm buzzing in the upper regions of my brain after too much to drink. Those days were pleasant and hazy, sweet like pumpkin juice, each almost indistinguishable from the hundred that had preceded it.

I watched along with everyone else the two of you growing closer, heard over the rushing of water on tiles about the first time he kissed you on your sixteenth birthday. It wasn't jealousy I felt, for I didn't feel about you then the way I would come to, rather the thrill of shared conspiracy, whispered conversations as we walked back up to the castle broomsticks in hand. We giggled about it together out of earshot of the boys, and I even lied to cover you the few occasions when you missed practice to spend time with him. Despite this newfound closeness however, I stood helplessly on the sidelines, observing as though from afar as he broke your heart that cold February morning. I saw you cry, eyes red and puffy above tear-stained cheeks. I felt lost again, helpless, as though the clock had spun backwards in the blink of an eye and I was once again my inadequate eleven year old self. My words were bumpy and awkward, the wrong shape to comfort and reassure you, too rough to wipe the tears from where they trailed down your face. It made me think of liquorice and aniseed, deep melancholy tastes that lingered in my mouth long after your quiet sobs faded to be replaced timid conciliatory smiles.

Ironic though it sounds, it took your heart breaking to finally touch my own. For a while you were distant, allowing scabs to form and scars to fade at long last. Eventually things resumed as they were, although this time I held myself back. I felt guilty for feelings I couldn't help, quashing them beneath our renewed closeness, never daring to believe for a second that I would see those very same feelings staring back at me if I could only raise my eyes to look. Lost in my own world of addled thoughts and misplaced desires I was oblivious to your increasing exasperation. You cornered me finally at the side of the lake. The first time your lips brushed tentatively against my own I couldn't quite believe it was real, I thought I was lost in another vanilla daydream, the taste of you sweet and sharp, the brush of your fingers on the nape of my neck sending shivers the length of my body.

Then sometimes, just very occasionally among our primary coloured existence there came from nowhere those shining golden moments, almost too perfect to be real that when I think of them I can still taste the rich caramel melting slowly, exquisitely on my tongue. Those late nights that spilled over into mornings, the kisses of burning liquor as we danced alone in the deserted common room long after everyone else had left. Stolen Sunday afternoons we spent tangled together in your single bed, the warm summer breeze from the open window caressing the fine strands of your honey coloured hair. Your feather light kisses across my breasts and stomach, tracing a meandering path lower and lower until my back arched and a wordless cry tore from my lips. I remember now the odd dusting of freckles sprinkled like cocoa powder just below your collar bone, toned athletic thighs, the feel of your pale milky skin as I drew patterns with my finger, pictures and shapes plucked from the air just to watch your eyelids flutter at the sensation.

And then... And then we grew up. Isn't it always the way? Our shared school days drew inevitably to a close, our friends scattered to the winds as our lives, entwined for so long grew separate once more. They told us it wouldn't last, that it was for the best, how first love cannot endure; it burns too brightly, too fast, only to fade with time or turn sour. Fresh faced and far too young we believed them, parting with tears and bitter anguish burning like vinegar in my mouth as we embraced for the last time on the busy station platform.

I drifted that summer, tried not to think of you in London, of your new job and new friends. When September came around and I found myself once more on the train heading North, I couldn't resist glancing in each compartment I passed, scanning the common room each time I entered the portrait hole longing for a flash of blonde hair: lips curved in the same smile that was imprinted on my eyelids every time I lay down to sleep. In your absence my life went on, although in some indefinable way it seemed less than before. There were lessons and quidditch matches and detentions, Mondays and Wednesdays and Saturday afternoons. A boy who was clever and funny asked me out and I said yes to my own surprise. He made me laugh and I enjoyed it even though he was nothing like you. But although his words were sweet and well intentioned I was unable to taste them.

Needless to say I didn't feel this way at the time, but in retrospect nearly dying was almost the best thing to happen to me. When I awoke after what seemed like weeks I didn't notice you at first, the figure in the fuzzy background behind the relieved faces of my parents. When my mother finally released me it was only then you stepped forward, and I almost lost my hard-won consciousness all over again taking in your blue eyes rimmed with red and your green healer's robes. We lay there side by side, you on top of the covers and I underneath in that cool sterile hospital ward, silent but for the mixture of old regret and fresh promises you murmured softly in my ear as you held me tightly. When I fall asleep not long after it is with the brush of your lips on my cheek and the tender whisper against my skin "I will never let you go", for only us to hear.

The end.

**Reviews = muy buenas :)**


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